OFLUXO

Galerie Francesca Pia is pleased to announce an exhibition by Eliza Douglas and Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo) based on a dialogue between the two artists and a mutual reflecting on their respective artistic practices.

With the six new paintings in this show, Eliza Douglas continues to reference specific works of other artists within her painting. Each of the works depicts a documentation of earlier costumed performances by Puppies Puppies in which her identity remained veiled. Only when Puppies Puppies started hormone replacement therapy as a means to begin gender transition did both the artist’s body and her real name appear in her work. Douglas’s painterly depictions of these performances behind the grid of a window, provides a proverbial glimpse into Puppies Puppies’ artistic past.

Douglas’s video work in the exhibition appears as some fragmented version of the TV series The Walking Dead, from which she has cut out all scenes with actual humans. Her binge watching performance as a postapocalyptic zombie in front of a large mirror-like screen, is a self reflecting and parodistic commentary on a contemporary social media centered life and her own objectification as a figure in the art and the fashion world.

Puppies Puppies’ (Jade Kuriki Olivo) performance in which she lies in an open coffin is not only referencing her previous work but can be seen as a metaphor for the dysphoria she feels as a queer/trans person. Death is also something we all have to contemplate. It can be an especially persistent subject when someone is dealing with depression or severe health concerns.